Over at East Asia Forum, Desmond Ball and I have a short analysis of the relationship between military professionalisation and Thai politics. We argue that “Thailand’s increasingly professional army is yet to disentangle itself from politics: it remains a potent political force and has proved willing to make abrupt interventions to protect its role.” We offer a brief explanation for this state of affairs. The full article, which appeared in the last edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, is available here.

“The Republic of the Union of Myanmar [Burma] is satisfied with the current [Thai] goverment and I think from today on, more border crossing points will be opened to encourage visits,” Gen Yutthasak said after meeting with the commander-in-chief of the Burmese armed forces at the Defence Ministry.

How could anyone call the Thai armed forces “increasingly professional”? I’d use military terminology, but only Professor Ball would understand what I was saying, so I won’t.
The army units in Bangkok may be better trained, have slightly better discipline, better weapons and equipment, but to say the armed forces are professional is a joke. Look at any unit entrance in Bangkok and surrounds and at their “guard” on that entrance gate, they stand around smoking, disinterested, with no supervision from either NCO’s or officers.
The New Year saw all their antiquated patrol boats and “elite” (ha ha) Seal units anchored off Koh Samet “guarding” a minor princess while she took over a whole resort that they put “out of bounds”. The fact that I didn’t see one “rubber duck” break down from neglect, which normally happens, doesn’t make them better than they used to be last week when they were just mediocre. And just who will pay that bill or will it be regarded as an “exercise”?
That was just prior to all the armed forces chiefs doing their yearly adoration and thanks for my promotion trip to see Prem. I wonder who owns the house he’s in and who pays for it? Come to think of it I wonder how many “full generals” he has as “aides” this week under his tutelage, being next in line for the “top spot”?
And let’s not forget the Army chief’s rabid statements about protecting the monarchy, not the country, just the monarchy. Which raises the question about what the armed forces really do because they certainly don’t protect the south of Thailand and they certainly don’t patrol down there…except in vehicles and that’s only when they leave their barracks, which is even rarer.
Calling an armed force increasingly professional is like saying it’s fit for a king.

Observers agree that in many respects Thailand’s army has become more professional over the past two decades. It has more resources than ever before, with consistent access to overseas training, especially at prestigious institutions like West Point, the Virginia Military Institute and the Australian Defence Force Academy. It also enjoys grand investments in cutting-edge technologies and is now one of the best-equipped armies in Southeast Asia, arguably second only to high-tech Singapore. Thai army units that were deployed to East Timor for the UN peacekeeping mission demonstrated respectable standards and were well regarded by other foreign forces.

Yet there is little sign that this investment in professionalism is reflected in the army’s organisation or many of its operations…

…the increasingly professional cadre of technologically competent and foreign-trained officers is still largely captured by the culture which has consistently dragged the Thai army into the heart of national politics.

Of course, not all observers would agree with these statements, or others. Professionalism is, as ever, a loaded term.

I think Nich makes a good point. Literally a locked and loaded term with the military. Is the US military professional?

They’re a paid military force, not conscript, and now many are not even in the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. They’re purely ‘professional’ assassins.

They lost 4,500 people in Iraq but managed to kill at least 100, maybe 200, times that many Iraqis : Why do we ignore the civilians killed by American Wars?. If they had been that professional in Vietnam they’d have killed 5 million Vietnamese. As it is they only managed to kill half that many, give or take a half million. Real ‘progress’. Of course due to the long term effects of their wars against the planet itself, via Agent Orange and Depleted Uranium, the totals will continue climbing for decades longer.

Professionals are teachers, doctors, lawyers… the word professional, like intelligence, doesn’t belong in the same sentence as military.

“Despite displaying many of the external symbols usually associated with military “professionalism”, the Thai military still descends into being a murderous rabble, with badly maintained equipment leading to multiple accidents, terrible hazing regimes that have caused numerous deaths in the last few years and an extraordinary willingness to turn their guns on the very Thai civilians they are charged to defend.”

John Francis Lee – while the US military certainly have a lot of blood on their hands, particularly in SE Asia, they are not particularly renowned for staging coups or massacring their own citizens. Very likely, if they did, there would be a significant uprising amongst the American population.

As Thucydides is said to have pointed out, it’s only a matter of time before the same tactics used externally to control an empire come home, and the police in America are now virtually indistinguishable in their star-wars get-ups from the imperial forces abroad, they are increasing funded by Washington DC, and they are focusing on such ‘terrorists’ as environmentalists and animal rights activists, and protestors in general.

The other side of the comparison is to point out that the Royal Thai Army is really the Imperial Royal Army of the Bangkok Empire, and the Thais they routinely terrorize, torture, murder and disappear are not regarded as ‘True-Thais’… Bangkok Thailand-ruling Thais… but as imperial subjects, as America regards Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, or Venezuealans.

But you’re right. Breaking the hold of the political soldiers in Thailand would be more of a blow against empire in Thailand than in the USA, where the generals and others are still content to just follow orders.

However, you’re an academic producing papers that are supposed to be drawn as reference points in the creation and dissemination of “knowledge.”

If you use a term that then falls apart after the first, very obvious, critique and you then claim said term is very “loaded” without actually extrapolating on what that actually means in the paper that you use it in, why use it at all?

Are you being deliberately misleading or do you think you should retract the use of the term?

I still endorse the argument that the Thai army is, in part, “increasingly professional”. As we say in this brief article: “there is little sign that this investment in professionalism is reflected in the army’s organisation or many of its operations”. Indeed we outline “three reasons why greater investment has not created an entirely depoliticised and professional army”. We could go on, but in a short piece there is only so much we can say. If Thailand is going to be a more peaceful, more stable and more democratic place then the role of the armed forces, especially its most “professional” components, is a big issue.

Explaining some of the reasons why all the investments in professionalisation still haven’t made enough difference seems like a good start.

The Thai army is far away from being a “professional” army in Huntington’s sense.
I recommend the article of Pavin Chachavalpongpun in the book “Political Resurgence of the Military in Southeast Asia: Conflict and Leadership” (Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series) edited by Marcus Mietzner (2011). Great articles on civil-military relations in different countries of SEA.

@ Roger
Whether an army is professional or non-professional can barely be decided by casual observations of soldiers’ behaviors.

@ Peter O’Hara,
As a retired professional soldier who has been in and around Asia for years I tend to disagree. I didn’t base my observations casually, I based them as, firstly a combat soldier, secondly as a professional and thirdly what is the accepted standard of professionals.
Professional soldiers take pride in their dress, arms and bearing and as a frequent visitor to various units in and around Bangkok (Supreme Command HQ for one) I am often appalled at what I see.

I don’t wish to enter the debate as to whether the Thai military is more professional or less professional but soldiers who are paid to kill or be killed are professional in much the same ways that teachers who are paid to teach, no matter how well or how poorly, are paid to teach. I also suspect that when professional soldiers go to war they hope to win wars or at least win battles they participate in which reminds me of a well-educated US marine who had his balls blown off during the war in Vietnam saying well we won the battle I was in but now I have no balls!

@ Shane Tarr,
If you don’t wish to enter the debate, why do it? The fact that it has nothing to do with Thai armed forces professionalism just detracts from the debate.
The armed forces of a country are there to protect the citizens, all the citizens no matter who they voted for, of the country not only in war, but peace as well and the Thai armed forces just don’t do that. A prime example was the floods just a couple of months ago in which I was in the middle of.
The fact that the army commander openly pledges his allegiance to the monarchy and not the country…and elected government…is indicative of fiefdoms of bygone eras.
My perspective is purely based on my time in the Australian armed forces and what we would have been expected to do during a time of crisis, peace and war, and the Thai armed forces do none of it.

Wonderful Roger but I suspect you are being a little ethnocentric comparing the defence forces of two countries that are not alike in many ways. Only partially entering the debate here rightly or wrongly the Thai military has played a greater role in shaping Thai society than the Australian military has played in shaping Australian society.

Correct me if I am wrong but the Digger Tradtion and the ANZAC spirit are not grounded in professionalism but forms of voluntarism (certainly misplaced in WWI but not so in WWII) and conscription (highly misplaced during the Vietnam War: at least for those Australians opposed to the war in Vietnam) and some aspects of professionalism (perhaps misadventure in Iraq and Afghanistan but more useful in peacekeeping roles) and of highly dubious value domestically (Howard intervention to save Aboriginal communities from themselves).

@ Shane Tarr,
I agree the Thai armed forces have played a greater role in shaping Thailand, but they shouldn’t have, certainly not after 1976.
The reason I stated I served with the Australian Army was simply to show what I based my analysis on; 21 years of service in what most Australian citizens regard as a professional armed force no matter at home or abroad. The fact they don’t take orders from the Queen of England, they take orders from the current elected government is what I was referring to and I gave a number of examples where the Thai armed forces are a force unto themselves.
The topic was about the increasing professionalism of the Thai armed forces, which is like digging half a hole. An armed force is either professional and answers to the current elected government and people or it answers to itself, which is the case with the current Thai armed forces.